My member thingy is turning purple! (ciao.co.uk)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	ciao.co.uk
Date:	13/08/09 (129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Technically strong

Disadvantages: No money to be earnt

So, after being exiled to ciao for two weeks it's great to be back, our opposite number, you will be reassured to know, still a dull old place --- so please don't send me back there! I miss all the cute girls on dooyoo and it was very tough!

Technically, ciao is our superior though, far more gadgets and gizmos for members to mess around with, useful hyperlinks to this and that on your personal page and in-house survey site too, a much more sophisticated product rating system going to waste. But like a new cell phone you soon get bored of pressing those buttons. I suppose an analogy is Ciao is like being in a very fast car with lots of levers and extras on the dashboard and a nice sun-roof but you cant go over 70mph - and you don't get much to the gallon rewards wise either. Dooyoo, on the other hand, is like a foreign cities reliable public transport system that's efficient, reliable and on time and you know you will great mileage for the efforts you put in but without the pretty girl on the next seat, even though there are plenty of gorgeous girls there. In fact dooyoo`s payment system is unrivalled on the net and why there are so few members writing on ciao right now.

Ciao it's hopeless for payouts, the grand total of £2.52 earned in two weeks for yours truly, of which I immediately put a bid in for Peter Crouch to play for Northampton Town this season, but Spurs trumping me with an accepted bid of a round fiver.

Rates are just hard to come by there, twenty five if your lucky, rating back the way it works on Ciao. The rewards consist of a monthly handout of ten diamonds worth £15 each and a Premium Fund, shared out to various reviews of various sizes on the 15th of the month. I wasn't expecting to earn from them as you have to put yourself about the site first to get noticed. I'm not sure how I earnt my £2.52 as you don't seem to get paid for being rated on per review you write. You only get paid for rates when ciao tell you which products to write about, which you pick from a list. But as I say its no where near as busy as dooyoo and the atmosphere is like a school dance where all the boys are sitting on one side of the hall and all the girls the other and only a handful on the dance floor to get the party going. Kevin Bacon (me) has arrived but I have left and yet to crank up the music, John Lithgow's preacher still very much running things.

The general newest review list has seven pages and about 8 hours worth of reviews, although nowhere near the amount of quality as dooyoo. In fact when I returned to dooyoo you realise just how much better and committed our writers are and why the good ones there are also here. In fact there's a moronic attitude to ciao in that people churn there yet don't get paid for churn like they do on dooyoo? There is a specific section for churn in the quick review drop down box where three line reviews are accepted but with no cash on offer, again bizarre why people bother. One would suspect some of this churn is posted up by ciao itself to keep the site busy and the advertisers happy.

Novelty wise its good fun. You can paste pictures and photos into the middle of your reviews to push the theme of your work or just make members laugh. They also do video reviews for the brave and gorgeous. I have yet to try as I'm not gorgeous or vain enough but after a few pints late Saturday I may review some Afghan rocket launchers or female sex aids or something.lol. Not surprisingly the video review option is rarely used and when it is it's the same members. I'm not sure if you can win rewards for those though. You can also post draughts in their little storage area that you want to work on later before you put them up proper.

Profile page wise members are awarded different coloured buttons for how long they have been on site and contributions made etc, my blue member button soon turning purple (oooo matron!). If you edit your review it automatically goes to the top of your personal list and you also have the private messaging system we have on dooyoo although they also offer a public guestbook as well as the comment section under reviews to say hi. There's an ask a question bit on your account page although unclear who you are asking it to.

There seems to be an impressive movie database on ciao as I have not yet had to suggest films to go up, the most obscure ones already there when you tap them in the search engine. Their speakers corner section, the ciao café, isn't as good as ours and there wasn't even a swine flu category up yet. I have yet to ask for anything to be posted up so don't know how long they take to do that. I also didn't notice any guides, always a good thing, those off topic and exceptional buttons under your work seemingly doing the job.

-The conclusion-

If you want to make money then Ciao is not for you, more a place for occasional solid writers or churn addicts than skint students. Our very sexy dooyoo Spanish writing star is doing great on ciao, causing a few boys hearts to flutter (and the girls to sharpen their claws), a typical Latin preferring the slower pace of life on ciao. I'm sure if you post up a couple of excellent reviews a week there and get a lot of ratings then there's premium fund money to be made, but I doubt weather more than twenty members are making decent money on site. On dooyoo absolutely anyone can make good money and ciao is suffering for that. The big plus on ciao on rating is they not only have our Not Useful-Very Useful buttons but those two additional ones. The off-topic button allows ciao to identify copied and abusive reviews quickly and the 'exceptional button' (their crown button) allows you to see who has given the review the top mark, and how many times, so you can gage its reward worth. It would be fab if dooyoo could list crown nominations under our work so we can see just how many people actually nominate them. It's all quite confusing on dooyoo when reviews get crowned on Tuesday morning (crowns day) just after they have been posted up. It would be cool to see which member or guide made that happen so promptly.

Ciao is going to have to be my BBC3, a place to try out my more risky material, as I seem to be dooyoos Jonathan Ross right now (although not on the same money). I'm afraid to paste up anything decent here now. If you don't like my occasional risky comment or review on ciao or dooyoo then just say hi and I will apologise or explain it. If you moan about every little thing members write then the site is weakened because people are afraid to express themselves and so leave and the quality of work becoming diluted. I'm Jeremy Clarkson not Hunter S Thompson.lol.

Summary: Writers forum...